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End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

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31–40 of 180 posts

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#31
post #21
post #2

They intentionally make it really hard to migrate your data off their app under the premise of "security". Now, they are EOL'ing desktop apps, which are extremely convenient to use, despite the terrible UX. https://support.authy.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260805179070-Ex... The process for exporting is doable, but requires fairly deep technical knowledge and it isn't 100% clean. In order to do so, you need that desktop a…

What should I replace it with? Any recommendations for a functionally equivalent cross-device 2FA app?

I migrated to 2FAS, which is open source, free and has a nice UI. Used Authy for ages and just switched. Recommended…

https://2fas.com/

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#32
post #2

They intentionally make it really hard to migrate your data off their app under the premise of "security". Now, they are EOL'ing desktop apps, which are extremely convenient to use, despite the terrible UX. https://support.authy.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260805179070-Ex... The process for exporting is doable, but requires fairly deep technical knowledge and it isn't 100% clean. In order to do so, you need that desktop a…

Important point out of that reddit Bitwarden thread: If you migrate to another app and then delete your authy account, you risk having 2FA removed for some integrated accounts if they're set up to directly use the Authy backend. Twitch in some cases was pointed out.

At some point Cloudflare also used their weird OTP variant

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#34

Yeah, super-ugh. Every 2FA vendor wants to lock you in. I was able to export secrets from GAuthenticator on a rooted phone with sqlite, it looks like that is still possible on Authy too. Another vote for rooting your phone.

I REALLY want to like passkeys, and all these other stronger vendor systems, but the lock in is real. Office365 defaults to their special authenticator, and you have to jump through hoops on the admin side to ensure TOTP is an option. It will be a very real improvement to security for non-tech users, but the refusal to let folks be 100% in control of their key material, and the lazy "it will be available in a later version, we're focusing on the most common use cases" just tells me that the implementers really don't want to do it in the first place: they're waiting for lockin with what's available, and then they'll just say "Well people adopted it w/o this feature, they must not really want it"

There 100% has to be a way for the user to own + backup their own private key material, or these are all just paths for stronger lockin.

Personally, I have a TOTP App (andOTP) with QRCodes on paper in cold storage, keepass-based tools for passwords across platforms, and Syncthing for syncing across these systems.

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#35
post #21
post #2

They intentionally make it really hard to migrate your data off their app under the premise of "security". Now, they are EOL'ing desktop apps, which are extremely convenient to use, despite the terrible UX. https://support.authy.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260805179070-Ex... The process for exporting is doable, but requires fairly deep technical knowledge and it isn't 100% clean. In order to do so, you need that desktop a…

What should I replace it with? Any recommendations for a functionally equivalent cross-device 2FA app?

Password Store works fine for me: https://www.passwordstore.org/

https://github.com/tadfisher/pass-otp

Others have also said Bitwarden isn't too bad: https://bitwarden.com/

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#37

Yeah, super-ugh. Every 2FA vendor wants to lock you in. I was able to export secrets from GAuthenticator on a rooted phone with sqlite, it looks like that is still possible on Authy too. Another vote for rooting your phone.

The newest version of Google Authenticator just lets you display the setup QR code again, no rooting necessary!

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#38
post #2

They intentionally make it really hard to migrate your data off their app under the premise of "security". Now, they are EOL'ing desktop apps, which are extremely convenient to use, despite the terrible UX. https://support.authy.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260805179070-Ex... The process for exporting is doable, but requires fairly deep technical knowledge and it isn't 100% clean. In order to do so, you need that desktop a…

I use Authy. I've read a few comments about how migrating away is difficult. What do you use instead? I also use bitwarden, but not sure how I feel about passwords and totp being in the same app.

> I also use bitwarden, but not sure how I feel about passwords and totp being in the same app.

I guess this depends on your threat model. In what cases would your password vault be compromised, but your TOTP vault still be secure?

If someone gets access to your unlocked PC/phone, don't they then have access to both? Do you store your TOTP vault password in your password vault (obvious)?

If someone gets into your password vault, why wouldn't the same mechanism also let them get into your TOTP vault? (This applies whether it's brute force, keylogger, hardware exploit, or $5 wrench.)

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#39

How do folks use two factor auth for 1password logins? It feels wrong to me to use 1password as the second factor for 1password itself. My last remaining authy second factors are for primary email and 1password. All other second factors are in 1password.

For 1Password I use a Yubikey, but for 2FA in general, I have a backup phone running Aegis[1].

[1] https://getaegis.app/

Re: End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

#40

Yeah, super-ugh. Every 2FA vendor wants to lock you in. I was able to export secrets from GAuthenticator on a rooted phone with sqlite, it looks like that is still possible on Authy too. Another vote for rooting your phone.

I REALLY want to like passkeys, and all these other stronger vendor systems, but the lock in is real. Office365 defaults to their special authenticator, and you have to jump through hoops on the admin side to ensure TOTP is an option. It will be a very real improvement to security for non-tech users, but the refusal to let folks be 100% in control of their key material, and the lazy "it will be available in a later v…

Unfortunately there is no key exchange format specified in either FIDO or WebAuthN, which I view as a major downside as well.

The closest you can currently get is an open-source authenticator implementation that lets you export its credentials, like e.g. Bitwarden does (it supposedly lets you export WebAuthN credentials via JSON, but I haven't tried it myself).

I get that any UI way to let users export credentials is a potential phishing/social engineering avenue, but the lock-in danger is real, and I'm holding back on WebAuthN as my primary authentication method for now.

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